System information

Red Book for AIX Rel. 7.0 and 8.0

Verifying Your Backup Tapes

Use the Backup Table of Contents Readback function to verify that a backup of a file was

successful. When a file backup is successful, the system updates the file's backup time and date

in the tape's table of contents.

After you load the backup tape in the drive, the function reads back the table of contents. You

can then check the time and date of the last backup for the file in question.

Intuit Eclipse recommends verifying your backup at least once a week.

To verify a file backup tape on tape:

1. From the System > System Programming > System Maintenance menu, select

Backup Table of Contents Readback to display the CPIO Backup Table of Contents

screen.

The system populates the Backup Device field with the backup device name specified in

the Unix Backup Device Path Name control maintenance record. For example, /dev/rmt/0

might be the backup device name.

To read from a drive other than the default drive, you must enter that drive name.

2. Mount the backup tape on your tape drive and press Enter to begin verifying the tape.

Note: If there is no tape in the drive when you press Enter, the following

message displays: Cannot find or open the file.

The program reads the tape. File information scrolls onto the screen. If a file is listed, it

was backed up.

The following six columns of information display:

• Size of file.

• Owner of file.

• Bytes of data in file.

• Date and time the file was last updated.

• Directory.

• File name.

3. If you want to check a particular file, scroll through the displayed screen to locate the

name of the file to check.

4. When you locate the file name, look in the fourth column to find the date and time you

made the last backup.